1. Field of the Invention
This present invention pertains to computerized mail systems referred to as email and more particularly to a method and a system for handling email and making available valuable related information and content to benefit companies and individuals alike.
2. Description of the Related Art
Written communication over a network of computers, which is referred to as email, has become a very common form of communication, particularly since computers have become connected through corporate companies' internal and external networks and through the internet. Much of the volume of email is handled using Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange provided by Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., particularly for business communication, but IBM Lotus Notes and internet search engine companies such as Yahoo and Google also handle a considerable volume of email. Individual consumers also use services provided by companies such as America Online and Hotmail.
Effectively handling the volume of email that particularly a busy corporate employee gets is challenging in many aspects. Various patents and patent applications propose solutions for addressing various problems with email, such as a proliferation of junk advertising email, as well as to improve productivity either in computer systems through hardware performance efficiencies or of people handling their email through best practices approach. U.S. Pat. No. 7,155,481, issued to Prahlad et al. and incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes, is directed to Email attachment management in a computer system. Quoting its abstract, the Prahlad patent describes an “e-mail management system that includes an e-mail browser having a time variance interface that provides for storage into a storage media [and . . . ] provides for retrieval, from the storage media, of the e-mail messages corresponding to a user specified date [and . . . ] provides the user with an option of retrieving content of the attachment(s) from the storage media such that the content of the attachment(s) is retrieved by the e-mail browser only when specifically requested by the user.”
A U.S. Pat. No. 7,328,251 filed by Ahmed and Alam et al, and incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes, is directed to email consolidation of all Replies into a single Email. Quoting its abstract, Ahmed and Alam describes his patent as ‘messaging services to multiple users by storing a single copy of an electronic message at a central location and notifying recipients of the stored single copy . . . . A distribution list identifying multiple recipients’. Quoting its Summary and Objects of Invention, Ahmed and Alam describes his invention as “The host system stores as few as one copy of the electronic message, notifies each recipient of the stored message, and includes with the notification a link for accessing the stored message. Therefore, the host system saves both the processing time that would otherwise be used for duplicating and the corresponding storage space required to hold each of the duplicated messages.”
A U.S. Pat. No. 7,296,058 filed by Throop et al, and incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes, is directed to storing the contents of email attachments in a graphics database. Quoting its abstract, the Throop patent describes “content is then extracted and automatically loaded to a graphics database . . . content is associated with certain business tasks to facilitate future use of the content within automated workflow processes. Content is preferably stored within the graphics database as one or more single page TIFF files to memorialize the content for later use with the workflow processes.”
A U.S. Patent Application bearing Publication No. 20060143274, filed by Schulz et al. and incorporated by reference in its entirety for all purposes, is directed to email reply consolidation. Quoting its abstract, the Schulz patent application describes “grouping a set of emails into a set of conversations . . . ordering the emails of a conversation of the set of conversations based on a timecode of each of the emails . . . comparing emails within the conversation of the set of conversations to determine if emails of the conversation include other emails of the conversation . . . marking emails of the conversation as included responsive to the comparing” and deleting the marked emails.
Although email has been addressed extensively in the patent literature, problems remain in handling email and presenting critical information back to the viewers in a productive and legible method. In addition to various problems that individual consumers face, the corporate world still has problems in managing and maintaining their email-related business and operational functions. Problems include: difficulty or near impossibility to extract old emails quickly and legibly for internal use or for legal purposes; zero visibility of email proliferation and propagation that occurs in a practical environment when emails sent by one user to another can be sent to other users, without proper traceability or accountability; no means to have accountability-based knowledge of emails, their interactions and proliferations; lack of grouping, storing, archiving and quickly retrieving or obtaining multiple emails or groups of emails from different conversations (meaning emails with different Subjects that share pertinent and related contents based on either standards, policies or user defined criteria): lack of means for obtaining intelligent data or patterns from email communications that can present historical patterns and relationships and identify user trends or malicious activities; lack of means for manipulating existing data and historical patterns to derive future trends and forecasts; lack of deriving meaningful project-management related information such as attachment links back to the originating emails, most current updated attachments, attachment versioning to distinguish between updated copies and attachment sharing and updating ability by multiple users; lack of ability for dynamic grouping of active emails that are received within related confinement or projects to which they are associated; inability go package, maintain multiple disparate emails and their attachments and then obtain them quickly when needed; inability to create email relationships in a report or audit trail-type format; lack of means to efficiently migrate corporate and individual user emails from one email system to another such as, but not limited to, Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Exchange to Google; and inability of an employer to extract meaningful email data in the event an employee user quits and leaves. Corporate businesses, legal and government entities are currently challenged by these and discovery or audit related enquiries that involve extensive searching of massive amounts of historical emails to retrieve pertinent information. These and other problems and challenges remain in handling email.